187 Quotes by Lin Yutang

When we demand liberty of a person as a constitutional right, we are taking away from the officials their liberty to chop off people's heads.

Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?

Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.

The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.

We all have obligations and duties toward our fellow men. But it does seem curious enough that in modern neurotic society, men's energies are consumed in making a living and rarely in living itself. It takes a lot of courage for a man to declare, with clarity and simplicity, that the purpose of life is to enjoy it.

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world.

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.